East Asian Philosophy and Culture

Catalog description

This course provides students with a comprehensive overview of key philosophical issues in the East Asian traditions. It aims to familiarize students with the most prominent critical debates and philosophical concerns, as well as the latest state of the field. Students will read philosophical texts alongside the critical literature in order to deepen knowledge of and evaluate philosophical discourse in East Asia from ancient times to the present. The course exposes students to the general philosophical canon as well as a range of current philosophical scholarship on how East Asian philosophy is being pursued today. Critical analyses and philosophical texts are chosen so as to illuminate each other and highlight key areas concerning ethics, metaphysics and cosmology, political philosophy, and culture. At the end of the course, students will have gained a sound grasp of East Asian philosophy and its historical dimensions, and they will have developed a critical understanding of the current challenges and directions in the field. No prior knowledge of Classical Chinese is required, as all texts will be read in translation.